Professional Development
Gate City Writes offers twice a year, a four-day conference for classroom teachers, school administrators, and curriculum specialists of all levels and content areas who are dedicated to learning more about successful teaching practices related to writing.
Goals
The goals of the conference are to:
- Create a collaborative learning environment in which educators of multiple grade levels and disciplines explore the teaching of writing with support from UNC Greensboro faculty.
- Engage in the writing process with emphasis on research-based instructional practices, particularly incorporation of digital media tools and strategies for raising English Language Learners’ writing proficiency.
- Try out teaching of writing practices with young writers in a camp setting.
Outcomes
The outcomes of the conference are to:
- Write and publish an occasional paper
- Tailor instruction to the three primary forms of informational writing: exposition, argumentation, and persuasion
- Align a written text’s form with its purpose, audience and topic
- Support students at each stage of the informational writing process: research/analysis, planning, drafting, revising, and publishing
- Support students in using digital media tools at each stage of the writing process
- Apply specific strategies to enhance writing proficiency of English Language Learners
- Design and implement strengths-based assessment of student writing
- Facilitate teacher-to-student, student-to-student, and teacher-to-teacher conversations regarding analysis, evaluation, and feedback on written products
- Develop and share a resource file of exemplars and instructional materials for teaching, supporting, and evaluating writing
Core Beliefs
In alignment with the National Writing Project, we believe
- Writing is learned primarily through acts of writing, and by engaging in problem-solving through the writing process and from the study of mentor texts.
- Writing can and should be taught, not just assigned, at every grade level. Professional development programs should provide opportunities for teachers to work together to understand the full spectrum of writing development across grades and across subject areas.
- There is no single right approach to teaching writing; however, some practices prove to be more effective than others. A reflective and informed community of practice is the best position to design and develop comprehensive writing programs.
Gate City Writes would like to thank our community sponsors EarthFare, Insomnia Cookies and Krispy Kreme for generous donations that kept our teacher-writers well fed and ready to write!